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July 25, 2011
Tailoring Your Press Releases to Specific Outlets
We’ve all been guilty of it at one point. We write one press release and distribute it to a range of media outlets — newspapers, TV, radio, blogs, etc. And when we don’t get the results we hoped for, we wonder why. (Read more…)
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May 15, 2009
The Dangers of “Third-Party” Public Relations
Whether you’re a pundit, an expert, an analyst, or a third party, it’s important to remember that you rarely know all the facts. The media does not care about this; they just want a quote and a public relations contact to attribute it to. The juicier the sound bites you offer, the better for journalists, but not necessarily for you. (Read more…)
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April 2, 2009
Everything Journalists Want to Know About Their Public Relations Contacts
Since entering the world of public relations, my workday has changed drastically from the time when I was a professional journalist. Becoming a public relations consultant has altered how I deal with the media and how I deal with internal public relations at my company. (Read more…)
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March 18, 2009
Public Relations in the Age of the Sound Bite
Journalists love sound bites. We ask questions explicitly aimed at eliciting snappy, one-sentence comments. We’ve all seen television interviews or press briefings boiled down to a 15-second sound bite. Newspaper and magazine articles tend to have at least one definitive quote you can imagine a speechwriter whispering into a reporter’s ear. (Read more…)
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January 10, 2001
Martha, Martha, Martha! What Martha is Teaching Us
Are we sick of Martha Stewart yet?
The media is about five minutes away from overkill on the Martha Stewart story, but don’t expect that to stop editors and producers from pushing for more Martha stories. The domestic Goddess makes for good ink and exciting television play. A&E, the normally staid entertainment network, is rushing out a Martha program and is promoting it by using sound bites from the federal prosecutor’s press conference announcing Martha’s indictment. (Read more…)